


Odd Squad

by littlerhymes



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crime Fighting, Gen, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-07
Updated: 2008-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have superpowers. They fight crime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odd Squad

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks are owed to proteinscollide, who has many superpowers. She also prompts, beta-reads, and makes helpful suggestions.

**1\. Like moths upon old scarves**

  
On Jon's first day in Vegas, a headcase with laser vision and a grudge bursts into a busy restaurant, taking five staff members and thirty-two customers hostage.

He'd taken the red-eye from Chicago and was running on caffeine and adrenaline alone. First days are always rough but this - he thought while hailing a taxi to take him from the airport straight to the scene of the crime - _this_ is fucking nuts.

The place is swarming with cops, the entire block cordoned off with squad cars and harried-looking uniformed officers. Arms folded, they stand before a mob of bystanders recording videos on their cell phones, and reporters delivering breathless reports _live from a tense hostage situation_...

Jon pulls out his badge and sets his shoulders, tries to look more professional than he feels with about three hours of sleep behind him. "Federal agent," he says briskly to the officer waving him away. "I'm with Clandestine Ops."

He already knows where to go but lets the cop lead him over to an unmarked van set a little apart from the squad cars.

As he approaches, a skinny guy pulling a kevlar vest on over a crisp white shirt and a spaghetti tie steps out the back. His eyes flick over Jon's jeans and the backpack on his shoulder and he says dismissively, "This area's off limits to civilians."

"I know. I'm not a civilian." He pastes on a smile and holds his hand out. "Agent Jon Walker."

The guy turns and calls over his shoulder in the same bored voice, "Spencer, Brendon, the replacement's here." Then he goes straight back to strapping on the kevlar. Jon lets his hand curl in on itself, lowers his arm back to his side.

After a moment another two guys emerge from the back of the van. Neither of them seems to hate his guts, which at this stage he's counting as a bonus. One of them even seems kinda pleased.

"You must be Jon Walker - awesome to meet you, finally!" says the darker-haired one, although it's only been 24 hours since the transfer went through. "I'm Brendon Urie, hey."

Spencer's apparently the one running the show. He gives Jon a look like he's summing up the entirety of Jon's existence, and that's a little scary. But at least he takes the time to shake hands and say hi before turning back to Ryan.

They mutter into each other's ears, heads close, before Spencer squeezes Ryan around the shoulders and says more loudly, "Go for it, Ryan." Ryan nods once and heads for the barricades.

"Come on," Brendon says, tugging Jon along by the sleeve. "It's time."

Everyone else must know something Jon doesn't, because the loudspeakers are booming out instructions to _Stand back, stand back everyone!_ and members from the S.W.A.T. team are actually helping Ryan climb over the barricades.

"Are you serious?" Jon hisses to Brendon. "You're letting _him_ go in against the guy with the laser vision? What, is he, like, invincible? Incombustible?" _Crazy?_ he silently adds.

Jon's not a big guy, okay, but he could totally break Ryan like a twig. And there's no way in hell he's gonna believe that Ryan is any sort of negotiator.

The others don't seem overly worried. Spencer doesn't reply, his arms folded and eyes coolly fixed on Ryan walking towards the diner. Brendon just pats Jon's arm absently and says, "Don't stress, Jon, it's gonna be fine."

Ryan stops when he's a few steps away from the door. He's saying something, hands spread wide open and empty, his words drowned out by the choppers overhead. After a few moments the door eases open a crack. Ryan steps inside.

Jon takes a huge breath, and Brendon presses his arm a little harder. He whispers into Jon's ear, "Dude, just wait, his power is _awesome_..."

There's nothing to see, nothing to hear. No explosions or flashes of light or horrible screams like someone's abruptly met with a painful, burned-to-a-crisp death.

All that happens is a few minutes later Ryan comes out again, not a hair out of place, hands shoved in pockets like it's been a walk in a fucking park. He gives a lazy thumbs up to the S.W.A.T. team, saying, "All yours, guys," before sauntering back to the van.

Inside, as Jon finds out later, the S.W.A.T. team finds the hostage-taker passed out cold, not a mark on him, and the hostages smiling and sobbing in relief.

*

Afterwards, Spencer drives the team back to base. He fiddles with the radio from time to time, veering between easy listening, heavy metal, 90s pop.

Crammed in the back of the van with Ryan and Brendon, Jon asks, "So... ummm. What did you actually do back there? Like, what's your," and he hesitates before using the more neutral term, "ability?"

That's how blind he's flying right now. He doesn't even know his team's _powers_.

The call came through 24 hours ago and there hadn't been any time to get properly briefed. All he got told was the Las Vegas unit was short one agent and HQ wanted a sub in the field straight away.

Since graduating from the east coast academy, Jon's bounced around from team to team. He's mostly done ops support and technical shit, never been deployed full time in the field. Last year, he was backing up Beckett's team in Chicago and while it wasn't bad - he'd made some good friends, worked on some tough situations - it wasn't what he signed up for either.

When the call came through, Jon hadn't hesitated to say yes.

But when Brendon nods solemnly and says, "He shoots butterflies out of his wrists," Jon almost wishes he had. And he'd thought Brendon was the one who liked him.

Jon forces a laugh. "Fuck off," he says, very nicely.

Because come on, seriously? Sure, he's met people with some pretty weird powers, like Lindsey and her detachable torso, or Ryland's talking shadow. He's also met people who like being shitty to the new guy.

"No, seriously!" Brendon looks hurt. "Come on, you have to show him," he says, elbowing Ryan in the ribs.

Ryan rolls his eyes. Then he holds out his arm, the pale innerside upwards. For a moment there's nothing there and then - and then there is. Something with a soft compact body and velvety wings, skittering on six legs over the tattooed surface of Ryan's skin.

"No shit," Jon says. "Butterflies."

"Technically, they're moths, not butterflies," Ryan says. But he leans closer and lifts the moth onto Jon's arm with a careful finger.

Jon watches it walk all over his arm with a careful fascination, each tiny foot marching to its own beat. "Cool," he says at last, apologetically, as the moth flies back to Ryan's hand and vanishes. "Dude, that's... Really cool. And weird. And," he realises, "that still doesn't explain what you did back there."

"Ah, but that would be telling," Ryan says. Though he's still yet to crack a smile, at least it's a start.

"Hey, Spencer," Brendon says, clambering past them and into the front seat. "Turn the music up!"

*

The next time Ryan does it, Jon's there to see it happen.

It's part of an armed robbery investigation. Usually a bank hold-up wouldn't fall into their jurisdiction but at least one of the perps in this case was superpowered, judging by the spontaneous ignition of all the security cameras.

While Brendon and Spencer are shaking up the streets, Jon and Ryan go to the hospital to question the witness.

"I hate hospitals," Ryan says during the drive over. Jon gives him a look but he doesn't offer more than that.

So Jon's the one who asks the questions and takes the notes. He's good at this, keeping his voice calm, knowing when to press and when to pull back. She's an old lady, well into her seventies. Her memory's as shaky as her voice and once or twice she almost starts crying. She reminds Jon, painfully, of his own grandmother.

Meanwhile Ryan stands well back, shifting from foot to foot. Over the past few weeks Jon's gotten more accustomed to Ryan's tics and tells, even got him to laugh a few times. It still takes an effort not to turn around and say _if I hear your shoes squeak one more time..._

But when the old lady finally does give in and burst into tears, and won't or can't stop despite all Jon's soothing efforts, Ryan's right there at the bedside. He touches her arm through the thick felt of her nightgown, saying softly, "Ma'am, you should sleep now."

He steps back. Where his hand lay, there's now a pale, pearly fluttering. They drift about her face and shoulders. She's stopped crying. She doesn't seem alarmed at all, peering upwards with dimmed, wondering eyes.

"Sleep," Ryan says again, and Jon realises he's holding his breath.

Placidly she closes her eyes and slips into a deep sleep, her chest rising and falling in slow, easy rhythms. Ryan stretches out a long, lank arm and one by one the moths gather themselves back into the palm of his hand.

They were pale before, but now their wings have darkened into gray, as though they've given their colours away; or perhaps it's the other way around, and it's something that they've taken.

Ryan closes his hands around a fistful of sooty moths, around shadows, opens it again to show nothing at all.

"Seriously," he says to Jon, frowning slightly as they leave the room. "Don't you think hospitals are totally creepy?"

*

  
 **2\. When I was a bird, and you were a map**

  
"Hey, Walker," Brendon loves to say, leaning over the partition between their desks, "Jon Walker, where are my glasses?"

Without skipping a beat, Jon will reply, "In your pocket," or "On your desk," or, shaking his head, "Dude, you left them at home _again_?"

But glasses are easy. Too easy! So from time to time, Brendon makes up games.

"Hey, Jon," he begins.

Jon glances up from his mountains of casefiles with a _look_ , but Brendon's ready for that, counter-punching with a _smile_. Jon is very susceptible to smiles, it's one of his biggest weaknesses.

Before Jon can get his footing again - rhythm is very important, he remembers this from music class - Brendon's holding both his fists over the partition, saying, "Jon, you have to guess."

"It's not guessing if you tell me what it is," Jon says, but he's amused, not irritated. "Okay, okay. So tell me."

"A Junior Mint," Brendon says, very seriously. "Now guess which."

"Your left, my right," Jon says instantly and he's correct, of course.

Brendon throws the mint over the partition and Jon catches it deftly in his mouth, chewing it up and grinning back at Brendon with chocolate-stained teeth.

It's easy to pretend that Jon was always part of the team, right from the very beginning.

*

Brendon thinks people who complain about sleep _walking_ are wimps.

The sun's a bit of orange rind on the horizon and he's shivering on the balcony outside what used to be Brent's penthouse apartment. The night's chill still lingers and he's _cold_. Brendon blows on his hands and jumps up and down a couple of times to not much effect at all.

He's still bracing himself for the freezing journey back to his own apartment, just a few blocks over as the crow flies, when the glass door slides open.

"Hey," Jon says, around a yawn. He's sleepy-eyed and his hair is sticking up as badly as Brendon's. "Thought I heard someone out here. Come on, man, it's freezing."

Sheepishly Brendon shuffles inside and into blessed warmth. He politely pretends not to notice the pistol in Jon's hand, pointed down and held parallel to the line of Jon's thigh. It's just a professional precaution. Brendon would do the same if he was investigating strange noises at five in the morning.

Soon Brendon's channel-surfing from the couch while Jon putters around the kitchen fixing coffee and toast.

"You're gonna do this often?" Jon says, setting down a couple of steaming mugs. "Check up on me at the crack of dawn?"

"Umm. Sorry about that." Brendon takes a quick gulp of too-hot coffee. "I don't usually do this at all," he says after a moment, clumsy around his burned tongue. "In my sleep, I mean. Hardly ever, since I was a teenager at least."

When Brendon was fifteen, he started waking up in the strangest places. In the old treehouse no one used anymore. Curled around the mailbox on the front lawn. Down in the park, jammed into the child-size swing set.

No one could figure out how he was getting out of the house. The doors were locked, his keys were always exactly where he'd left them.

It was maybe the fifth time that he woke up while it was happening, floating out the bedroom window. His screams woke the whole house (his room was on the second floor, okay? It was a shock) and probably half the street too.

Even now that he's grown out of it, he's still not good with the idea of falling.

"Actually. Brent used to. This is where Brent lived, you know. Operative housing and all that," Brendon says, looking down at the couch. He picks at a seam in the cushions, saying, "I wasn't, you know. I didn't come here to check up on you."

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Jon's hands still, just for a moment. Then he's back to scraping butter over bread again, saying easily, "Yeah, I figured."

*

Jon drives Brendon home and then waits for him to get changed into work clothes before they head to the office. It's kinda awkward.

That ends when they immediately have to take an emergency call-out from uniformed officers requesting back up at a warehouse in the south side of town. Jon wins the race to the driver's seat and tells Brendon to _suck it, loser_ , so he knows they're gonna be alright.

"Hey," Brendon says as they hit the road. "Hey Jon, where are my glasses?" But he says it with a big goofy grin, since it's pretty obvious that he's wearing them.

"You're such a douche, Urie." Jon shakes his head and takes the corner with one hand on the steering wheel, all dark glasses and well-pressed suit. If it wasn't for the stubble he'd be every inch the federal agent. Brendon may be a little jealous. "Come on. You can do better than that."

"Um." Brendon looks down at his mismatched socks, the first two he grabbed off the floor, and notices a hole in the stripey left one. "Um. Okay. Where's my favourite pen, the green one I got from Tokyo Disney? I swear it was on my desk last week and now I can't find it _anywhere_ ," he says, folding down the top of the sock and hoping no one will notice.

"Buried in ten feet of landfill, just off Highway 93. Guess it fell in the trash or something." Brendon makes a disappointed sound and Jon adds, "My condolences, man. If you want, we can take a roadtrip and find it. You bring the shovel and the hazmat suit. I'll bring the moral support."

"That's a shitty plan, but still you're the best, Jon Walker!"

"Thank you, Brendon Urie." Jon guns the engine as they roar through an intersection, sirens screaming.

"You can find anything inaminate, right?" Brendon says. They're only about a block from the warehouse now. "It just doesn't work for, like, people and abstract concepts and stuff like that."

"Pretty much," Jon admits. "It's just a matter of knowing what to ask."

"Okay," Brendon says, thinking quickly. "So where are the guns? In the warehouse?"

Jon nods sharply. "There's just the one. West side, in a man's hand. Under the third window, the one with the crack in it."

Brendon braces himself as Jon steers the car off the road and up to the warehouse doors, braking with a screech of tires. They both thud back into their seats with an oof.

Jon's already opening the car door, reaching for his holster. "You ready?"

It's serious, he knows that, but Brendon can't help but feel kinda pumped. "When you are."

*

After the third time, Jon suggests, joking over another too-early coffee, that he should cut Brendon a key, save himself the trouble of getting out of bed.

"Ha ha ha!" Brendon says, because Jon is still easily distracted.

He doesn't really want one, not like this anyway, but he doesn't say no and the next day at work Jon makes good on the offer.

He lobs the freshly cut key over the partition, saying, "Just let yourself in next time, okay?"

Brendon strings it around his neck, to lie next to his battered dog tags.

The truth is. The truth is he could lock and bar the windows, he could set the alarms to trip, he could tie a piece of string from his big toe to the foot of the bed. He could fly home in the gray light of dawn.

Instead Brendon turns the key in the lock and quietly slides the door open along its runners. On bare feet he walks over to the bedroom that used to be Brent's and watches Jon sleeping, but only for a minute.

Then he goes back to the kitchen and starts opening and closing cupboard doors, running water into the kettle, waiting for Jon to wake and find him.

  
*

 **3\. Feathers everywhere, but I'm fine**

  
"So, about your power," Jon says, second night of the job. "I looked it up in the files and it said something about, like, sporadic sphenisciformthropy...?"

The others have gone home and they're meant to be staying back to finish their reports. In actual fact they've cracked open a couple of beers and are apparently doing the whole male bonding thing, which in Spencer's opinion was going just fine until Jon brought up the whole superpowers question.

He sighs. "Okay," he says. "It's like this. What happens is." He grits his teeth.

Years of experience still haven't made it any easier to admit. Like ripping off a bandaid, Spencer tells himself firmly, and takes a deep breath before saying it as quickly as he can.

Then he looks at Jon and dares him to fucking laugh.

"I." Jon is biting his lip. "Sorry. Um. D'you find that very useful?"

"Occasionally." Which is only sort of a lie. It got him into the academy and then into the field, right? That's pretty useful.

"Do you." He is laughing, the bastard. "Are you, like, one of the big ones? You know, the kind that mate for life and then in the wintertime the males -"

"Jon Walker," Spencer says loudly. "You can shut up now. No, seriously."

*

According to official Clandestine transcripts, Ryan started manifesting his ability at age fourteen. Spencer knows that's not true.

The transcripts also say that Spencer manifested at age thirteen, just a few weeks after Ryan. This isn't true either.

"Spencer, you can't tell _anyone_."

They were eleven years old when Ryan made him promise. It was the first time Spencer saw him work his power, watched Mr Ross break off shouting mid-sentence to topple peacefully to the carpet as the moths flitted about his head. The bottle of bourbon slipped from his hand and began leaking onto the carpet.

Ryan had half pleaded, half threatened: "You have to promise, okay? They'll send me away if you do. They'll make me go to the academy and I won't ever come back."

Which was the worst threat he could've possibly made, as far as Spencer was concerned. So he promised.

They kept the secret as long as they could. But at the back of his mind Spencer knew that one day the truth would out and Ryan would go, leaving Spencer behind.

For the next few years, Spencer waited and waited for some sign that it was finally his turn, that he'd caught up to Ryan. He'd just started to accept that it might never happen when some bully blacked Ryan in the eye, and everything changed.

"Who did it?" Spencer said, his hand tightening on Ryan's thin shoulder. "Tell me who did it!"

"Forget it." Ryan scowled as he shrugged Spencer away. "It was some guys from high school, okay? I don't know their names or anything. Don't make a big deal about it."

"Yeah, well. Next time," Spencer said, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna -"

"Yeah?" Ryan smile was sour. "You're gonna what?"

A week later they cornered Ryan and Spencer on the way to school. Just a bunch of jocks with nothing better to do. They threw insults at first, then half-empty cans of Coke. The sticky dregs hissed and dribbled down their shirt fronts, their school ties.

Ryan kept his head down but Spencer had had enough. It was the laughter that did it - not just from the jocks, but their classmates as well, the nervous laughter of people trying not to be noticed.

He threw his bag down. "If you don't leave us alone," Spencer said, hands curled into fists, "you're gonna be sorry."

He could feel a strange prickling running up and down his skin, the sensation of ten thousand tiny needles. It didn't hurt, especially. In later years he'd learn to recognise the feeling as a warning sign.

The laughter didn't let up, and one of the guys, bigger and stupider than the others, lunged forward to grab Ryan by the arm.

"I said, leave us _alone_!" Spencer said, shouting. The prickling feeling all over his skin grew very very strong, but he shrugged it off as he stepped forward, fists clenched and -

\- and promptly turned into a penguin.

*

It took about two hours to wear off.

He spent most of that time in the school's sick bay with Ryan, while the nurse and the school principal made frantic phone calls to their parents and to Clandestine.

It would've been fine, except that Ryan kept bursting into fits of laughter, always followed by a barely-remorseful, "Oh my god, Spencer, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Spencer gnashed non-existent teeth, beak clacking. The first thing he did when he changed back was punch Ryan in the arm. Really hard.

Then they got down to business. "This is our chance, Ryan. We have to be ready," Spencer said sternly. "Clandestine are on their way, the cat's out of the bag -"

"Don't you mean, the bird has flown the coop?" Ryan said, perfectly straight-faced. "Ow, shit, Spencer!"

When Clandestine showed up a few hours later, they both had their stories straight. They were going to be text book cases, perfect candidates.

"It's happened a few times, yeah," Spencer said, frowning and feigning reluctance. "Can I control it? Um. I dunno. I guess, maybe, with the right training...?"

In the next room over Ryan mouthed similar, interlocking lies. The Clandestine recruiters nodded and scribbled down everything they said. Thankfully, they didn't have any psychics with them.

Two weeks later, when they took Ryan away to the west coast academy, Spencer went with him.

*

He never did get the hang of the whole penguin thing.

Usually he needs to be angry or stressed out to trigger an episode, but sometimes it happens when he's asleep or exhausted. Once, it happened during a date with a really hot girl and _that_ was incredibly awkward.

When he was younger, the academy instructors made noises about possibly becoming an aquatic spy for the Navy or some such bullshit, but that kind of talk petered out when it became obvious it wasn't a trick he was going to be able to perform on demand.

Mostly what he learnt at academy was control. _Not_ transforming into a penguin while scaling a skyscraper or breaking into a secured facility is, in Spencer's opinion, a vastly underrated skill.

The point is, he didn't get to where he is today because of his powers.

Ryan's unique and his talent just gets weirder all the time. Brendon's one of the few people in the world that has a bonafide superhero power, just like in the comics, while Jon has one of the most useful powers Spencer's ever heard of, period.

But Spencer's been on more missions than Jon and Brendon combined and, barring the superhero stuff, he scored the shit out of every logistical and tactical test the academy could throw at him and then some.

So, yeah, sometimes he's been known to sprout feathers. These days he's mostly okay with that.

*

"A _penguin_ , holy mother of god!" Jon says, still cracking up. "Okay, this is definitely, hands down, for sure, the _best_ motherfucking unit in the whole country."

"Yeah, and you're the jackass that joined it," Spencer says matter of factly, but he waves the empty bottle at Jon and says, "Another?"

  
*

 **4\. Find your own way back home**

  
Three months after he joins the team, Jon's abducted.

An anonymous tip-off says an arms deal is going down in a car wrecking yard in the west of the city. Nothing to indicate extraordinary circumstances so the local authorities run the show, with Clandestine attending just for the look of the thing.

That's how the script was meant to go, anyway.

It's not an arms deal or a drug deal or any sort of deal at all. It's a rumble. The raid soon turns into a firefight, the night shattered by the stutter of gunfire.

Huddled behind the armour-plated van, Ryan returns shot after shot, wishing he could use his power and knowing there's too many of them. At least his hands don't shake, and that's what counts right now.

The crackle of orders in their earpieces sends them forward, Spencer and Brendon first while Ryan and Jon cover them. Then Jon's pushing him - "go, go now" - and Ryan hustles to the next patch of shelter, skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust and gravel.

As he turns around to signal Jon, there's an explosion that knocks him flat to the ground.

After a moment Ryan staggers to his feet, ears deaf with ringing and eyes streaming from the too-bright light. "Jon," he says, coughing.

As the dust clears he sees Jon, a few feet away and standing very very still - probably because there's a mobster behind him, holding a pistol to his head.

The crim backs away, holding Jon in front of him as a human, breathing barrier. Ryan doesn't need to hear it to know the guy's snarling _back the fuck up_.

One clean shot would do the job but everyone hesitates, and that moment's all the time the remaining mobsters need to hustle into a shot-up SUV and hightail it the fuck out of there.

*

"What if he." Brendon paces the length of the room, hands twisted behind his back. On a monitor behind him, the grainy CCTV footage loops over and over. "What if they. Oh, jesus."

"If they know what he does, what he can do, they'll want him safe," Ryan repeats for for what feels like the fifth time. It's actually an effort not to raise his voice. "They'll want to use his talent."

"But what if they." Brendon stops pacing and it's more obvious that he's shaking. "What if they don't?"

There's a short, nasty silence. They're all thinking about Brent.

"Guys. We'll get him back." Spencer speaks up for the first time. He looks at Ryan, then Brendon, holding their gaze in turn. "I promise."

If there's one thing Ryan knows, it's that Spencer never makes promises he doesn't intend to keep.

*

HQ says if they want back-up, Beckett's team can be there in five hours and Saporta's in nine.

"Not good enough," Spencer says flatly. "We're moving on this now. You can send a teleporter like I asked or you can let us do our jobs." He slams down the receiver.

"Spencer James Smith the _Fifth_." Ryan looks at the phone, caught between horror and admiration. "I can't believe you did that. To the _director_."

Spencer's already up and moving for the door. He shoots over his shoulder: "The police have a lead on the vehicle at an abandoned factory outside of town, they've got three squad cars on the ground and we needed to be there five minutes ago."

Ryan must still look stunned because Brendon elbows him in the ribs. "Come on, we can worry about that later. Jon, remember?"

It's hearing the name that snaps him back into gear. He takes a breath and says, "Already there, Urie," and they end up racing down the hallway after Spencer and to the van.

*

Later, Ryan will remember watching Brendon shoot through the glass ceiling in a hail of bullets before flying through it, followed by the S.W.A.T. team on their abseils.

He'll remember seeing Spencer and the ground team burst through the factory doors, grim-faced behind their visors and riot shields as they storm the factory floor in deadly formation.

The squad cars, the sirens, punches thrown and shots fired, suspects wrestled to the ground and cuffed - Ryan saw it all, because he was there. And there. And there.

The moths are a part of him. Most of the time that's all it takes, just a part of him, each tiny form subtracted from the sum total of his flesh.

On that night, there are so many moths that there is no Ryan, there's nothing where he was but a pile of crumpled clothing and a kevlar vest.

He's a hundred thousand soft grey bodies, a million fluttering wings. He's everywhere.

Upstairs on the factory floor, the last few mobsters are crumpling to the ground, their bodies slack and sprawling. _Sleep. Sleep now._

While down below, down the stairs and into the basement, a silver moth flits towards a battered figure strapped into a chair.

The moth alights on his knee and walks across the dirtied denim with tiny, precise steps.

The prisoner sags against his bonds, smiling with bloodied lips. "Ryan. I knew you'd come."

*

The plastic seat is wretchedly uncomfortable, the smell of antiseptic is giving him a headache, and the only thing he has to read is a months-old copy of _People_ magazine.

It's worth it to be there when Jon wakes up.

"Hey," Jon says. His smile is so easy and unexpected it kinda makes Ryan's breath catch. "Thought you hated hospitals."

Ryan pulls the chair a little closer to the bed. "Obviously, I made an exception."

Jon looks around the room, sees the empty chairs. "Brendon and Spencer - they're okay?"

"Yeah. They're just down at the cafeteria. Brendon said he wanted jello. Um." Ryan looks down and back up again. "I'm really glad you're - I just wanted to say. Um."

"Shut up, Ryan." Jon reaches out and takes his hand, squeezing slightly. Ryan squeezes back and doesn't let go. "You're not gonna do the moth thing, are you?" Jon says suddenly. "I don't wanna go back to sleep yet."

"Yeah, right, I waited five hours for you to wake up just so I could knock you out again."

Jon's eyes widen. "Five hours?"

Ryan briefly contemplates strangling himself with his scarf.

" _And_ you also rescued me from the evil clutches of a deranged criminal - obviously, I'm going to have to make this up to you," Jon says, voice dropping.

The words hover in the air, their eyes briefly lock. Ryan puts the strangling plans on hold.

*

It's been three months to the day since Jon arrived in Las Vegas, seventy-two hours since the big showdown at the factory. Probation's over.

They set up a video conference with Clandestine HQ. Jon goes into the boardroom first. When he comes out, he has his hands in his pockets and an expression that's perfectly and implausibly calm.

He jerks his head towards the door, saying, "Your turn. They want all three of you. Say nice things about me, okay?"

Inside, a gargantuan version of Pete's head grins at them, blown up by the projector to the size of the boardroom wall. At this scale his mouth is large enough to chew each of them up and spit them out again, no problem. Next to him is a similarly giant Patrick-head, carefully straightening his spectacles.

The boardroom table's been shifted to one side and three chairs are placed in the centre of the room like sacrificial offerings before an altar. Ryan takes the seat in the middle.

"So." Patrick clears his throat and looks down off the screen, shuffling papers. "Jon's probation is up. How's he been working out?"

"Fine," Spencer says, crossing his arms. "Better than fine."

The questions go back and forth for a while, the usual _how did he perform in team situations?_ and _what were your impressions in the field?_ and _you didn't hook up with him, did you?_ (The last one was Pete, naturally. Ryan rolled his eyes and thought really hard about statistics.)

"I think that's it, then," Patrick says at last, and looks to Pete who picks up the cue instantly.

"Yeah, look, we know it's always tough replacing team members and we're sure you guys gave it your best shot," Pete starts, putting on his most serious face. "And as you're aware, Jon's a great guy and a very valuable agent. A _very_ valuable agent," he repeats, in case they haven't got it.

Ryan flashes to the memory of bruises on Jon's ribs, the split in his lip, and feels like he's gonna throw up. Beside him he can feel Spencer's arm tensing, and the jiggle in Brendon's leg ratchets up another notch.

"Basically, Beckett's team has a vacancy, again, and we were thinking of offering it to Jon." Both Pete and Patrick look at them expectantly.

"NO," Ryan says instantly, so loudly he surprises even himself. Pete's eyebrows shoot up practically to the ceiling. Patrick just looks _concerned_.

"Uh," Ryan says in a more moderate voice. "No thanks. I mean, we're keeping him. Uh. If he wants to stay, that is. Right?" he adds belatedly, looking at Spencer and Brendon.

The same thought crosses their minds at the same time. _But what if Jon doesn't want to-?_

The looks on their faces must be answer enough because on screen Pete cracks up completely, laughing like a hyena. "I knew it." Pete elbows Patrick in the ribs sharply. "Patrick, I totally called this, didn't I? Didn't I say this was gonna work out just fine?"

"Fucking psychics," Spencer mutters, not quite under his breath.

"Okay, then," Patrick says, rubbing his side gingerly. "That's fine. We just wanted to make sure before making the transfer permanent. I'll put through the paperwork today."

Pete leans into the camera to add, "Now get out there and fight some crime!"

Before Pete's finished speaking, Brendon lets out a whoop and runs out the door yelling, "Hey, Jon!" Ryan and Spencer follow at a more dignified pace.

"Let's hug it out, bitches," Jon says, doing exactly that with Brendon before smacking a kiss to Spencer's forehead.

When he comes around to Ryan, Jon pulls him close, breath tickling in Ryan's ear. "And now you're stuck with me, huh?"

"Seems like it." Ryan twines his hand in Jon's, heart thumping. "Yeah, I guess you'll do."

**Author's Note:**

> 1) jackalakala did some [amazing artwork](http://community.livejournal.com/bandom_art/36171.html) of Ryan and his powers. I love it!
> 
> 2) In the comments to the original post, proteinscollide asked: "what happened to Brent?" This was my reply, which I made up on the spot, so feel free to take it or leave it.
> 
>  _Contains violence._
> 
> "When he was first came to the academy with the rest of them, Brent could only teleport a few feet at a time. He wanted to be a field agent but the instructors kinda shrugged, and were, like, well...
> 
> Yet he kept practising at it, always worked hard and quietly, had finally pushed his radius out to 10 feet by the time they graduated.
> 
> 10 feet doesn't seem much but it's enough to phase through walls, up and down floors, from room to room. In close quarters and in narrow city streets, it's invaluable.
> 
> 10 feet doesn't mean a fucking thing to an escaped supervillain with deadly aim and a high powered rifle, out in the flats and harsh sunlight of the Nevada desert.
> 
> ... eventually Brent recovers from his wounds, the surgeons sew up the seams, he stops bleeding.
> 
> But he never wants to work in the field again."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Odd Squad](https://archiveofourown.org/works/611707) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)




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